Washington Post: A Wrongly Imprisoned Man in Virginia

Washington Post: A Wrongly Imprisoned Man in Virginia

A Wrongly Imprisoned Man in Virginia

The Washington Post

November 13, 2012

IN VIRGINIA, a young man has languished in prison for four years for a crime he did not commit. Now that his lone accuser has admitted that she invented the charges against him, the state and the courts seem paralyzed, unable to quickly arrange for the release of the wrongfully imprisoned man. This is a travesty.

The man is Jonathan Montgomery, age 26. In 2007, a then-teenage girl named Elizabeth Paige Coast accused Mr. Montgomery of having molested her six years earlier, when she was 10 and he was 14. It wasn’t true.

In the alternative, according to the attorney general’s office, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) could pardon Mr. Montgomery or commute his sentence. But until Tuesday morning, Mr. McDonnell seemed unaware of the case, and there is no evidence that Mr. Cuccinelli (R) alerted him to it….